Smoking and Quitting Smoking (cont.)

Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD

Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, is a U.S. board-certified Anatomic Pathologist with subspecialty training in the fields of Experimental and Molecular Pathology. Dr. Stöppler's educational background includes a BA with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia and an MD from the University of North Carolina. She completed residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Georgetown University followed by subspecialty fellowship training in molecular diagnostics and experimental pathology.

Jay W. Marks, MD

Jay W. Marks, MD, is a board-certified internist and gastroenterologist. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine and gastroenterology at UCLA/Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

What problems are caused by smoking?

By smoking, you can cause health problems not only for yourself but also for
those around you.

Hurting Yourself

Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco contains
nicotine, a drug that
is addictive. The nicotine, therefore, makes it very difficult (although not
impossible) to quit. In fact, since the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 report on
the dangers of smoking, millions of Americans have quit. Still, approximately
440,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year from smoking-related illnesses; this
represents almost 1 out of every 5 deaths. The
reason for these deaths is that smoking greatly increases the risk of getting
lung cancer, heart attack, chronic lung disease, stroke, and many other cancers.
Smokers die an average of 10 years earlier than nonsmokers. Smoking is the most preventable cause of death. In addition, smoking is perhaps the most preventable cause of breathing
(respiratory) diseases within
the USA.

Hurting Others

Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family
members, coworkers, and
others who breathe the smoker's cigarette smoke, called
secondhand smoke or
passive smoke. Among infants up to 18 months of age, secondhand smoke is
associated with as many as 300,000 cases of
chronic bronchitis and pneumonia each year.
In addition, secondhand smoke from a parent's cigarette increases a child's
chances for middle ear problems, causes
coughing and wheezing, worsens
asthma, and increases an infant's risk of dying from
sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS).

Smoking is also harmful to the unborn fetus. If a
pregnant woman smokes, her fetus is at an increased risk of
miscarriage, early delivery (prematurity), stillbirth, infant death, and low birth weight. In fact, it has been estimated that if all women quit smoking during pregnancy, about 4,000 new babies would not die each year.

Exposure to passive smoke can also cause cancer. Research has shown that
non-smokers who reside with a smoker have a 24% increase in risk for developing
lung cancer when compared with other non-smokers. An estimated 3,000 lung cancer
deaths occur each year in the U.S. that are attributable to passive smoking, and
an estimated 49,000 deaths each year in total from all smoking-related
conditions occur as a result of secondhand smoke.
Secondhand smoke also increases the risk of stroke and
heart disease. If both
parents smoke, a teenager is more than twice as likely to smoke as a teenager
whose parents are both nonsmokers. Even in households where only one parent
smokes, young people are more likely to start smoking.